An age-old idea permeates numerous 2025's genre movies. It's an idea that goes far back to the days of Charlie Chaplin. In James Gunn’s *Superman*, the villain is a envious, ruthless billionaire wielding his vast wealth to defame Earth's mightiest protector while controlling world events to enrich himself. In *Jurassic World: Rebirth*, the villain is a rich pharma-bro investing vast sums to cast the heroes into a monster-filled death trap for personal amusement. In *Zootopia 2*, the villains are a dynasty of extremely affluent lynxes who appropriated a kindly mom’s beneficial creation and pinned the blame on her for murder, all for their dynasty's gain.
A Legacy of Cinematic Elite Villainy
Within the dystopian thriller *The Running Man*, a wealthy media magnate embodies a affluent bad guy operating a TV network that profits hugely by preying upon and eliminating people enduring abject destitution, while leveraging digital impersonations and a sophisticated media apparatus to depict them as selfish, shiftless, dangerous criminals. The musical *Wicked: For Good* doesn’t emphasize class division in such a blunt manner, but its villains reside in conspicuous opulence while preying upon and oppressing Oz's poorest citizens, driving them out of jobs and into bondage. The Chinese animated hit *Ne Zha 2*, the year's highest-grossing film, sets the resourceful inhabitants of a hardscrabble farm town against haughty aristocrats who dwell in extravagant sky-high mansions floating overhead. Interestingly, the lighthearted humorous remake of *The Naked Gun* revolves around a billionaire's scheme to cause planetary doom — to make money, needless to say.
There is little especially new in a run of movies assuming as fact that rich people have disproportionate control, no morals or empathy, and a endless, demanding appetite for greater riches. "The wealthy are antagonists and plucky heroes are heroes" as a theme stretches back to the birth of movies, with the Little Tramp's adventures contrasting his perpetually impoverished beloved underdog against tycoons, industrialists, and clueless rich men. Beginning with the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "Let’s put on a show" classic musicals to the 1980s dance movies that revised a similar story for the era of the greedy, harmful Silicon Valley antagonist, the entire history of cinema is replete with "eat the rich" stories, which assume that riches is incompatible with core morality, and exalt the neutralizing, downfall, and sometimes destruction of powerful, wealthy people.
The Outlet That Alters Little
Nevertheless, somehow, we never actually eating the rich. On each occasion elected officials react to a new mass shooting event by pointing fingers at graphic media, I feel exasperated, because if people actually were that easily influenced — if repeated viewing to an idea via media was enough to cause it to infiltrate the collective psyche — undoubtedly American society would not persistently revere billionaires. But the news makes it obvious every single day that a frightening percentage of Americans innately equate riches with competence and value to society, even after decades of history's most popular movies conveying a contradictory message.
If anything, it appears that the endless parade of eat-the-rich storylines in American cinema has provided us with a safety outlet that impedes real-world action. Given a frequent serving of largely happily-ever-after tales where the everyman triumphs, while the billionaires are neutralized and shamed, everyone can finish the film content about justice being served. These movies are like ethical parables, implying that institutions function, and that determined protagonists will weed out any corrupt individuals among the largely hard-working, virtuous, deserving wealthy who succeeded through sheer effort.
A More Pointed Message in 2025
Even though 2025's movies are not novel in that respect, they do follow some modern developments among eat-the-rich stories: They’re getting more enraged, sharper, more targeted, and seemingly more lethal. It is no longer satisfactory these days to see rich people learn a useful lesson in humility, like in 1941's *Sullivan's Travels*, or forfeit their fortune to the people they exploited, like in 1983's *Trading Places*. In 2025, selfish, cruel rich individuals were killed by mythological beasts (*Death of a Unicorn*) and consumed by a enormous hybrid beast (*Jurassic World: Rebirth*). They were destroyed on a hostile planet (*Mickey 17*) and gunned down point blank on live TV (*The Running Man*). They were murdered with a corkscrew (*Companion*) and bludgeoned by an ambitious rival (*Him*).
"Hardly any of 2025’s super-wealthy villains get the hauled off to jail conclusion, possibly since it’s become so obvious that affluent individuals live by their own legal rules, and are all too likely to buy their way out."
The "off to face justice" ending no longer satisfies anymore. Conversely, these villains are prone to meet their end at the conclusion of their movies, often in particularly grotesque, ironic ways.
Key Exceptions
Some films diverge, of course. Superman's arch-nemesis in *Superman* is merely humiliated, exposed, and sent to prison. Evil mastermind Julian Dillinger in *Tron: Ares* winds up banished to the computer world, a setup that obviously being saved for future installments. Korda in Wes Anderson's *The Phoenician Scheme* forfeits all his money and is reformed as a person. The Lynxley family members in *Zootopia 2* are revealed to be frauds and deceivers, but they don’t meet|avoid
